The fellows are selected by the permanent faculty of the CAS in an annual competition. According to CAS director Leon Dash, "The Center for Advanced Study (CAS) supports the extraordinary human and physical resources of the University of Illinois by encouraging and promoting exemplary scholarship in all areas of knowledge. One of the primary missions of the Center is to identify the very best scholars at the University." The fellows are provided with one semester's teaching release to pursue groundbreaking research activities.

During his fellowship appointment, Chemla will exploit the capabilities of a unique instrument that he developed, which combines high-resolution optical trapping with single-molecule fluorescence microscopy, to study the molecular "nanomachines" involved in genome maintenance.

Neubauer will use his fellowship appointment to launch a new computing facility at the University of Illinois to process and analyze the massive datasets obtained by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. He will also work on detector commissioning and development of a fast hardware tracker (FTK) for ATLAS.